president obama and speaker john boehner met at the white house on sunday to discuss the impending fiscal cliff. neither offered details about the discussion, but both said the lines of communication remain open. is the fiscal cliff end game finally approaching? joining us now is ben white, politico's chief economic correspondent. ben, maybe it's good news they didn't come out and say, we're so far apart. >> it's a good sign. any time that boehner doesn't come out and say, we're nowhere, that's good. these things are going to get done in private. both sides need to leap off a bridge here. the republicans need to some how figure out how they're going to let the top rates go up. democrats need to swallow some changes to entitlement programs, raising the retirement age or changes. the less we hear, the better, in the next few days on the negotiations. as soon as you hear leaks saying these guys are too far apart, that's the problem. if we hear nothing, that's actually pretty good. >> are we starting to see the beginning of the gop move into the center with the comments over the weekend from